Nalge Company, a division of Sybron Corp. of Rochester, N.Y. has been well-known in the laboratory equipment supply field for many years, particularly for its line of plastic equipment including bottles made of polyethylene, polypropylene and the like, much of which is sold under the trademark "Nalgene". Because they were originally designed to securely hold possibly hazardous chemicals, Nalgene (brand) polyolefin, screw-cap bottles are especially rugged and leakproof. Somewhere at some time, a chemist or chemistry student who was also a rock climber, a mountain climber, a camper, a backpacker, a bicycle tourer, a skier, a hunter or fisher, or like variety of hiker "adopted" a Nalgene bottle as his or her water bottle. Popularity of that bottle and others like it has rapidly increased to the point where such bottles are now standard items of equippage for hikers of all types. This is so even to the point that many people commonly but incorrectly use "Nalgene" or "nalgene" to denote a kind of usually right circular cylindrically bodied, usually translucent white, rugged polyolefinic plastic, capped bottle for carrying a hiker's water supply or other liquid supply regardless of the manufacturing source of the bottle. For convenience in description and to avoid misuse of the brand name, such a bottle will be termed a "hiker's plastic bottle".
Another item often packed by hikers is a cup, which may serve not merely to drink a liquid poured from the hiker's plastic bottle, but also as a vessel in which to hydrate or rehydrate and to mix beverage concentrates, freeze-dried meals, and the like, and as a server from which to drink and eat. One popular design of such a cap has a stainless steel body of frusto-conical, upwardly flaring form with a wire handle of hooked-loop form. This cup may also be used on a stove as a vessel in which to heat the hiker's food or drink however it is difficult to suspend such a cup over a fire where there is no convenient grating or other support means on which to support the cup over the heat. Further, the flared sidewall of the hitherto popular cup generally results in an inefficient use of some of the precious space in a hiker's pack.